Guild Wars 2

Cronicle.5691:

To Devs.

Please look into Thief deadly arts master trait; “Improvisation”.

I’m very confused with the intention of this trait as 10% damage increase for using a “bundle” (note: it does not effect thieves steal skill bundles) is hardly worth taking it for and the rng is too unreliable of a trait to make it effective and a master like trait. This trait feels more outdated and forgotten since beta.

1st. The trait misinforms its actual function.
2nd. the Rng is unreliable. i can put 3 deception skills on my utility bar, non will recharge after 20 steals, or mix matching deception, tricks, and traps, still non instantly recharges.
3rd. something else could/should replace this trait

I Use this trait all the time.

As to the RNG, it procs every type of listed skill, whether you have them equipped or not. This prevents you from using the trait to get a 100% chance of a successful recharge basically, and it is purposely designed to be somewhat unreliable, and used as a “welp” if all of your stuff is on cooldown, or to enable some neat doublecast tricks if you pay attention and… ya know… improvise. That RNG is pretty well balanced as it is for a 20 point trait, but the damage buff needs to at the very least affect stolen items, and ideally effect damage while holding one.

I’d like to bring a POPE group on one of your runs if that’s okay. TC main is pretty good but it’s still a bit of a scrum, I’m interested in seeing how you folks run it. Mail me ingame I guess.

I disagree. I think the most effective villain GW2 has had to date have been the Karka. While people might be annoyed by fighting them (Personally I think they’re really well designed as enemies) Let us not forget that Karka are not only terribly mysterious, but also SENTIENT and OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THE LAST DRAGON UPRISING.

It’s easy to forget those two things because we don’t speak with them, and it’s difficult for us to understand the way their ancient hive-mind works, but they are absolutely capable of higher logic and reasoning, at least in a collective sense.

Karka’s Track record is as follows.

• Invaded Lion’s Arch and did permanent, lasting damage.
• Were beaten back at great cost and effort, but have never been truly defeated.
• Own an entire zone, a feat only the Flame Legion and Risen can match.
• Aren’t in their swan song period of LOSING that zone like the FLame Legion and Risen. Nobody attacks the Karka, they just defend and build walls.
• The only enemy faction to have become more powerful and dangerous as the story progresses forward.

We did F/U by having one person with good passive heals (my evasion/signet of malice thief in this case) solo melee the tree while everyone else stayed near the mouth of the cave and kept the number of spiders on me managable It was tough but not impossible. We were informed in this because we used basically the same plan when dealing with graveling zergs in AC (I tanked certain graveling mounds, or the zerg at the spike traps section to keep the enemy from overwhelming the group) Just took us a few tries to see the respawn mechanics and learn to focus spiders and blast the tree occasionally.

After the second wipe we developed our plan and it worked fine. Why do people complain about this path so much? I feel like often There’s a “role assignment” option avaliable in most dungeons, but the problem is that nobody ever builds for any role but glassy DPS. This is kinda the fault of the encounter design in that CC and sustain are just generally not useful for dungeon groups because straight damage is enough to walk through the majority of encounters. You can generally pull, ball, and AoE most groups.

Heck, the reason people don’t generally run CM is because the encounters for the most part don’t fit this mold (and also it’s FULL of traps) and is one of the few places in the game where good CC and some tankability are often better than just another zerker for the health of the group.

CHIPS.6018:

More examples. The biggest the attack (and damage), the more the visual cue have to be so the players know they must dodge this or die.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaFm0HB3nD0

They actually do that on smaller enemies, there’s a very distinct “I’m Charging up a big attack” effect common to almost all enemies with big attacks.

The larger enemies (like bosses) sometimes fudge it a bit. However, you’re asking for ridiculously overdone effects like in a lot of japanese games and animation, where somehow every weapon glows like the sun and evey hit has a massive flashy effect that takes up half the screen or something. What it seems like you’re asking for is just plain contrary to the visual style of GW2, and would look ridiculous in a lot of cases.

In fact, that game is already so overloaded with flashy effects that it works to the detriment of the combat mechanics and makes it harder to see and react to attacks than in would be if things were LESS flashy. Ever try to get bonus damage from theif or ranger side/back hit traits in a big event? It’s nearly impossible. The new “Effects LOD” option doesn’t seem to do much of anything to help that either.

My biggest gripe with big hit damage attacks is persistant floor effects I think. With very few exeptions, floor effects are only noticable via red floor circles. In a lot of places this works, but in many places the ambient lighting is orange/red, or the ring effect is covered by water/etc which results in taking damage from a source you couldn’t see clearly.

As far as actual direct attacks, the game is generally pretty good about communicating them I think, though I’ll agree that in a few cases some things could be better telegraphed or communicated in boss fights, the vast majority of small enemy effects are well designed and make sense for the damage they do.

Daecollo.9578:

Nilkemia.8507:

Then they could just give us the ability to alter the color of the particle effects as well.

That is a bit more complicated.

I do this for a living, and no, it’s not any more complicated to change the color of a particle effect than it is the skin on a model. Both read texture data from a source image file.

In many cases it’s actually easier to change the color of particle effects, as diffuse textures are usually (not in this case but usually) comprised of multiple tones, where as it isn’t uncommon for particle effects to be read from greyscale source imagery, and the RGBA values are interpolated in software via a series of blend keyframes.

Additionally, the whine of this particular topic is staggering.

We’re actually GETTING skins. Skins that aren’t part of a gem store gambling grind. You know, something we’ve been asking for in LS releases over and over and over. Your response is “Yeah, but they’re blue and not red. Also it’s not weapon dyes. Anet is so greedy.”

They’re blue TA skins… because it’s an extra path of TA which involves the Aetherblades and their crazy blue lightning.

We’re starting to see some recolors because it’s faster to get recolors in than brand new models, sure, but have you ever though that the reason behind it was so that we simply have a wider selection? Doing “quick” skins means the ability to push more skins overall, and yeah, sometimes it’s nice to just have a couple different colors of the same thing.

Yes. They removed weapon dyes since the first game. They stated a long time ago why. It’s the reason we don’t see much dyable new armor. (Aside from the need to tweak it for certain racial body types, and do versions for two genders) It takes a quite a bit more work to build a multichannel toned grayscale shader than a simple diffuse/specular/normal shader which artist designed color values. It would seriously lower the speed at which weapons can be added to the game.

I saw a youtube video!
It had numbers in it!
Those numbers are bigger than some other numbers!

Nerf something!

All norn, everywhere.

Some Sylvari.

Some humans.

Hillbillies aren’t a “type” they’re just vagrants who live in the wilderness… like our player characters.

Sanduskel.1850:

I seriously suggest that you go try a low stealth reliant thief then come discuss this.

Not every build that uses stealth is a permastealth build. That’s the point.

Thief builds rely on one of two things for all of their defense. Evasion or Stealth. Literally half of all thief builds are heavy stealth users because that is how the class is designed.

You play an evasion build, I play an evasion build, but not everyone should be forced to play an evasion build. Stealth is getting dangerously close to being an unviable, and even detrimental build choice for the only class in the game able to build stealth specs. Do you see the problem now?

Kirschwasser.3972:

Andrew.6487:

And than ? Will u give we anti-clone skill ? or anti-pet skill ? anti-condi skill ? why is
thief only ? bad idea at all ! I give up, I’ll never spend any money on your game !

Only mesmers create clones.

Several classes have stealth.

Also… anti-condition skills exist.

Only thieves are reliant on stealth as a primary defense.

Only thieves have an entire trait line that requires being able to stealth to function.

What you’re saying is that giving thieves the ability to instakill a pet is fair because multiple classes have pets, Despite several classes having variant levels of reliance on their pets.

Permastealth is an aberration, not a norm. The thief community has been saying FOREVER that fixing stealth stacking is the proper way to prevent it.

nagymbear.5280:

I don’t get what is wrong with giving players a tool against stealth. There are tools against stuns, conditions even boons. I really don’t see how this will result in less interesting, more boring fights. I remember J. Sharp talking about active condi removal regarding rangers. He said he’d like to see more active play, where you try to force your opponent to use his cleansing, sort of a mind game. Thieves will still have evades, dodges, blinds, teleports to defend themselves for 3-4 seconds, and sic’em is on a 40s cooldown untraited, so I don’t see the problem here.

Because stealth’s durations an internal cooldowns are SPECIFICALLY balanced to account fo there not being external hard counters. This is because it’s effectively impossible to design hard counters against an opponent who can’t be predicted because they are invisible.

Basically, Stealth already has a hard counter: Stealth

Designing counters to stealth necessitates redesigning stealth itself.

Stealth isn’t an uncounterable juggernaut of pain and never was. It’s a moderately effective defensive tool. Burst builds weren’t broken because of stealth, they were broken because of damage compression. Permastealth isn’t borken because it does stealth right. Permastealth is broken because it specifically gets around the core design of stealth (that it is short term and reactive)

Revealed proliferation doesn’t counter stealth, it obliterates stealth builds, that’s the difference.

If Stealth builds were some sort of oddball gimmick this would be just fine and dandy, but they aren’t. Thief Stealth builds comprise a massive portion of the entire class design. It’s not just a tacked on thing people are abusing.

I abandoned stealth a while ago because I saw the direction balance was going. This is more of the same, and what’s more, Thieves haven’t been adequately adjusted to remain in fights long term for what’s been removed from their burst ability when relying on one of two avaliable defensive methods.

This is literally half of all thief builds. The other half uses evasion for defense. It’s not “a skill” to be countered. That’s how stealth is used on other classes. It’s “Countering all of your DPS uptime, condition removal, and defensive traits.” It’s is literally neutering an entire mechanic in a way that can’t BE counterplayed.

You can’t REMOVE revaled, you can’t COUNTER revealed, it JUST WINS.

That’s the problem. Thieves have been dealing with the problem since launch, we have a 5 point trait that kills us with revealed and there is NOTHING we can do about it. Giving another player the ability to create that situation with a button press is a horrible idea. Stealth just plain falls apart when the user doesn’t have control of the revealed state, and when stealth falls apart on a stealth thief, there are no other options.

If you’ve got 50 people wailing on a champion, having that champion NOT mostly immune to CC would make the fight largely trivial.

Heck, throwing 50 people at almost anything is the game already mostly trivializes it.

How about in stead of having people man turrets, have some people tasked with supplying ammunition? Make it a short run through hazardous territory with ground AoEs, maybe some light jumping challenges, etc. The twist is that the ammunition for the turrets/mortars is highly volatile, taking any damage or entering combat will cause it to explode.

Each successful delivery adds some stacks of ammo to a turret, and the turrets display via the raising of a flag or somesuch what their ammo level is so the runners can easily determine which turrets need ammo.

As the fight progresses, Shatterer will create more obstacles allong the ammo run path, destroy ammo stores creatin small escort sub-events to set up now ones, and even create fissues that make players need to pass ammunition over a chasm or something, kinda like really high stakes keg brawl.

Couple notes on Thieves in this fight:

On defense (turrets/batteries):
Bring caltrops and shadow refuge, if you mainhand a dagger, keep in mind that heartseeker’s damage bonuses work on the claws, making you an extremely adept claw killer. If any claws pop up near your turrets, drop a shadow refuge on whichever turret you feel is most likely to get the poison pool, and break off from mob defense to go hit it. Chances are you’re the best person in the defense group to quickly burst down any rogue fingers that the zerg misses. The shadow refuge will grant a bit of HP to the turret user, but more importantly, it’ll grant a nice long stealth. The stealth won’t hide the turret operator from the finger, but it WILL hide it from any mobs that you may have accidentally drawn past the defense team when you went after the finger.

If you’re not packing a shortbow, you should be, and you should be spamming unexploded cluster bombs at all of the defense team’s fire and water fields, to keep up AoE healing and might. In a pinch, drop your caltrops to slow down any errant mobs, or drop it on any turret that you see under attack.

If defending batteries, all of the above tips apply, though in these situations shadow refuge is a better bet to help up downed people.

On offense:
Shortbow, shortbow, shortbow

The auto alone hits multiple targets, which automatically makes it your best weapon for hitting tequatl. If your zerg isn’t maxing out might on its own, make sure to hammer fire fields with unexploded cluster bombs to help increase everyone’s DPS. Your DPS may suffer, but adding another 5 stacks of might to 5 people means that you just added much more damage to the fight than you lost.

Also, if you’re specced at least 20 points in to deadly arts, its a good idea to swap to Improvisation. Personally I use this trait religiously all the time, but a lot of people don’t like it. For THIS fight however, it does two things that are extremely helpful no matter what your build is:

1. Chance to recharge utilities
No matter where you are in this fight, you will be using shadow refuge to res someone. as long as you keep up your steals you might get to skip some skill cooldowns for your stunbreak as well (bonus points for using roll for initiative as the break to maximize proc chance

2. Additional bundle damage
As the OP noted, eles will be dropping ice bows, and the skillset on the ice bow will do more overall damage while you wield it than your shortbow. Improvisation increases all damage while you’re holding any bundle (like an ice bow or flaming greatsword from eles) by 10%. DPS is DPS, and if you’re packing improv, you just became the king of all icebow users.

There ARE however undead horses

As much as I would love this to turn out true, I do not have faith enough in the people writing this story to have leveraged such an intriguing and meaningful plot hook.

I wish to be proven wrong but ultimately this level of complexity is beyond the scope of GW2, which is very much just random pulp fantasy at this point, where lore is written to justify adding things to the world in stead of the other way around.

You know…

ARE there female dwarves in Tyrian Lore, or are Dwarves really creatures formed from magic alone. I mean they like to say they were forged by the gods on anvil rock and I’ve never seen any indication or mention of lady dwarves, or even dwarven children.

Its understandable not to have seen them, but we had a lot of talk time with dwarves in GW1 and I can’t recall anyone ever mentioning a wife, child, or anything like that. Anyone remember any text to contradict that?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

A very good post about hidden lore

However, I’d like to argue that all of those abbadon connections were retcons invented specifically for Nightfall, to add credibility to there sudden having been added a fallen sixth god to the lore, and so they could put Shiro and the Lich in a mission just to bulk of the street cred of the new villain.

Honestly, I wish they hadn’t done that. The lore was far more interesting when people had motivations that weren’t just “oh right, because an evil god told them to.”

You know, just like how Charr were put in a retcon blender for GW2.

Nightfall was a great story, but it could have been the same great story without making abby an apperantly important ex-diety that we hadn’t heard about until that moment.

The Charr could have been the same great race in GW2 without retconning them in to having been responsible for Orr.

The Aetherblades could have been an even better enemy group if they weren’t just pawns of some Act 1 villain.

List goes on and on like this.

The lore team has over the years developed the disturbing habit of consolidating evil because it’s easier to explain in short sentances, which takes all the mirth and interest out of evil. Heck, When they decided ancient dragons were a thing they didn’t even bother “oh, they just wake up and detroy stuff… no reason, it’s just their thing.”

Evil for Evil’s sake is a bit uninteresting. You can’t empathize with it, you can’t feel sorry for it, and you can’t question your own moral fitness when you fight it. You just kill it while eating chips and talking about what happenned on TV last night.

Personally, I like to think that they were in heavy use during the guild wars, but that they were never native to the tyrian landmass.

It’s obvious that they’re a fixture in human culture, but lets be frank, tyrian humans have been having a tough time ever since the Guild Wars and breeding and feeding horses is pretty land and time consuming and in most of the lands we’ve visited with our characters there isn’t MUCH of a need for them.

I wouldn’t be suprised if one day ANet decided to add a large seamless continent (They’ve invented several we’ve never seen if you check out the Order’s globe) that that continent also included native horses… and was suspiciously absent of Moas.

Basically, everyone has an innate ability to DO so, just like everyone has an innate ability to swing a sword.

However, some people don’t ever practice swinging a sword, some people have never even held a sword. Everyone can be trained to a high degree of proficiency, but for genetic reasons some people are just more athletic, and thus make better swordsmen with the same training.

Basically, magic in Tyria is a learned skill with elements of natural prowess, just like learning to use a sword. Anyone can pick it up, but there are many techniques, schools of thought, and levels of innate ability.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

PopeUrban.2578:

Can we make basilisk venom apply unbreakable petrified to pets for 10 seconds? I mean it’s nearly the same thing.

pets dont have stunbreaks… so it does unless they have stability -RaO or that never used porcine trait

However, there are some skills/traits than can stunbreak allies. There are no skills that can remove revealed from allies. Also, BV only lasts 1 second. The proposed reveal from Sic ’Em lasts the full duration of the effect (maximum 10 seconds)

Actually, you know what? How about making stun breaks also cleanse revealed? Wouldn’t be so overpowered I think.

I’d kinda like it if it WAS intentionally placed there by Moto.

Problems with society? Build a machine to brainwash the youth of a generation, then, when the chaos wrought by your sleeper army comes to a head, fill the power vaccum it creates.

Also, because I think it would be awesome to get a LS dungeon with moto as the boss that runs the whole thing like Marvels’ Arcade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_%28Marvel_Comics%29

Then at the end in stead of killing him, we get him to see the error of his ways, and he’s instrumental in helping us kill Scarlet (also, Traherne dies somehow)

We haven’t really had any sympathetic villains, just all crazy and pure evil. I’d like to help turn someone’s life around for once

They’ve already pretty much said that it’s scarlet until the end of the year, as the entire LS up to this point (except for the southsun bits, SAB, and possibly Teq’s evolution) has been Scarlet related.

I mean they only let US know it was scarlet related a couple patches ago, but yeah, expect scarlet to be escalating to a final battle to take place in november/december.

Next year dragons maybe.. or something else.

Can we make basilisk venom apply unbreakable petrified to pets for 10 seconds? I mean it’s nearly the same thing.

There’s counterplay, and there’s “no, screw you, you lose an entire trait line”

Between stealth being given out like candy to every class, increasing addition of revealed mechanics, and just general one step forward two steps back class adjustments, I’m wondering who in the world is still actually complaining about thieves?

Personally, I abandoned stealth a while ago and have been getting systematically buffes playing evasion unicorn, but honestly, whatever happenned to stealth being a key defensive mechanic?

You could argue that sic ‘em has a 40 second recharge, but ten whole seconds of revealed from a single source? in group engagements that’s a death sentance to anyone heavily invested in stealth as their survival line. If we’re going down this road, revealed needs to be reworked as a mechanic so that some portion of the thief’s survivability traits can be maintained when outside of stealth.

Point-revealed makes sense and is appropriate in systems where you have semi-perma stealth, and it’s generally used as a preparatory action, but stealth in GW2 is largely defensive and reactionary.

I like the idea of more classes having unique meta-effects like mesmers have portals, guardians have bubbles, etc. and this is a decent one, but it’s also one that shouldn’t be implemented without giving thieves something equally meta-defining.

Venom share doesn’t cut it. It might have if basilisk venom was still unbreakable, but as is it’s just decent condition support for people who already have those conditions avaliable. Shadow refuge doesn’t cut it as the stealth it grants is being more and more marginalized by stealth and revealed proliferation.

How about it? How about something unique for thieves to add to a group? Then feel free to continue marginalizing stealth.

stof.9341:

PopeUrban.2578:

Thieves have a single source of stability ever, which is a channelled 90 second cooldown elite. If you cancel the channel, you are literally getting 9 ish seconds of stability for our elite slot.

I’m pretty sure every single elite that gives stability during channeling/transform was changed so that you lose the boon if you cancel it early somehow. Including Daggerstorm.

You may continue to be “pretty sure” but you are in fact incorrect. I use daggerstorm every single day, at pretty much every viable opportunity. It does in fact grant full stability if the channel is cancelled.

Feel free to PM me ingame for a demonstration, or load up a thief if you’ve got one any try it yourself.

At least when its all over he’ll finally have timje to go out and party.

Yolo-Tron

Because commanders are magically endowed with the ability to make better decisions than turret trolls?

Giving commanders “powers” is something that shouldn’t happen unless the entire method by which the title is gained (preferably, through actually displaying an ability to command) is altered.

If this went live today, You’d just see even more effective trolls, as they’d just kick people that were actually effective off of turrets in order to troll harder.

You guys don’t watch his twitch feed?

Zhaitan

Don’t rez me bro.
Gonna rally in a sec.

I have done it, and I’ve even done it once without taking damage or dying.

Don’t miss lilypads.

Don’t use the left or right largy pads in front of him.

Get to him quickly at the beginning so you can prevent his first tongue attack.

If he looks left, move to the right of the pad, and dodge left over the shockwave.

If he looks right, move to the left of the pad, and dodge right over the shockwave.

If he suats straight down, jump lilypads back to one of the rocks behind you, wait out the double shockwave then come back.

If he looks both ways, he’s about to open up, so get a crystal ready.

This fight is made considerably easier with the Moto’s Finger Elite from 2-3 normal or infantile mode. It equates to about one damage cycle, or a good 1/3 of his HP if used when he is vulnerable.

If you can’t be bothered to jump back to the rocks for the double-wave attack, bring potions (you can buy these in the shop just to the right of the boss door ) and just tank the double shockwave attack by walking to the front of the center pad, take the hit, and chug your potion while blinking (this is the best method for those with lag issues)

“You are about to experience Cantha as it existed prior to your arrival at Kaineng Center”

I mean it worked fine in GW1. I went back, did all the newbie island stuff despite it being out of chronological order, and heck, I even did it after I finished the actual story so it was just like a fun prequel with my character inexplicably there.

Just give us a historian NPC at the priory than can flip us back to “old” orr once the story is over.

Next time we see him he’ll be Evil-Tron

After defeat he’ll be Prisoner-Tron

Do it solo to get whatever achievements and stuff you want.

Do it with friends to show them how to do that thing they can’t figure out.

Do it with friends in tribulation mode because it’s always a contest to see who gets to laugh at everyone else getting killed. Also, Do it with friends in tribulation mode so you don’t miss a few particularly hilarious group-only kill animations.

Old skins will probably be re-added to the chest drop pool at some point.

We’ll start turning in bubbles for… well Ideally an entire suit of armor by the time this is all over with, starting with probably head, gloves, and shoulders.

And then, obviously, the ultimate private SAB machine in our home instance.

In the beginning:

World bosses were stupidly easy, but also dropped almost no loot. Not even a single rare. Champions were actively avoided rather than challenged because they often dropped NO loot. People complained, and nobody did the bosses because they were both unfun un unrewarding. People zerged Penitent and Shelter in cursed shore because it was just as faceroll, but paid way better.

Then!

World bosses were given guaranteed rares, which got multi-farmed, without being made harder. People did the bosses, which they still said were unfun, because it was more rewarding than other activities.

And Then!

World bosses got put on the daily bonus chest system, having their loot scaled back because all that reward for zero risk was bad. Bosses were still unfun. People did them because it was easy rares, but complained they couldn’t have their old farming speed of risk-free superloot. Bosses were still boring.

After that!

Event scaling! Champion Boxes! Other things that screwed the farming pie! Bosses became abandoned because they were a less efficient faceroll than the new faceroll.

Now!

Bosses getting the balance pass to marry risk with reward. Bosses are now getting challenge adjustments so that they are fun to fight… but their rewards aren’t in line with the challenge… which is exactly the situation champions were in at release.

Historical precedent! (The TLDR!)

When previous challenging content when unused to to a greater risk than reward, the reward was adjusted up to the risk. (Champ boxes, dungeon boss bags.)

When previous braindead content went overfarmed due to a greater reward than risk imbalance, risk was increased (Event scaling, world bosses…. also dungeon boss bags, heh)

Therefore, the likely outcome of this scenario, given historical record:

Bosses will not be made easier, but their rewards will be increased.

Champions will be placed on some sort of timer system, preventing players from farming them in a static loop as they respawn and in stead requiring players to venture to different zones and kill different champions.

Algreg.3629:

errrm, skill points are actually used in crafting and similar systems in gw2, a lot of them.

I am aware of that. What I’m saying is that those systems are extremely limited (essentially to gear and tray crafting, or siege upgrades) when you’re dealing with a “currency” that’s as ubiquitous as gold.

Look at what gold can get you, now look at what skillpoints can get you. There’s a huge disconnect there. Gold is versatile, skillpoints are extremely rigid, and karma is… well I mean it’s basically gold you can only trade with NPCs.

TBH the game has too many currencies already so any place we add more uses for existing ones is probably a good idea.

Lifewaster.5912:

PopeUrban.2578:

Thieves have a single source of stability ever, which is a channelled 90 second cooldown elite. If you cancel the channel, you are literally getting 9 ish seconds of stability for our elite slot.

Eles used to have the exact same thing with their channeled tornado elite, but that were nerfed so that if they canceled the channel they lost the stability buff.

Not sure why its considered ok for one class to be allowed to cancel their elite channel and retain its stability buff. Yet its specifically nerfed for another class to do the exact same thing.

Its even more useful on thief, to have an on demand stability for those occasions when you need that shadow refuge and enemies are trying to knock you out of it. You might almost consider it an exploit that allows thiefs to bypass the only available counterplay to shadow refuge.

Could it just be an oversight and not an intended use of Daggerstorm ?

It’s possible, but I may also be specifically due to the thief’s otherwise complete lack of access to stability (unless you steal it, which is extremely situational) and the fact that what thieves can do with 9 secs of stability is kinda tame in comparison to what it can get an ele. Basically, The ele’s multiple channel-type attacks are often significantly more effective if fully channeled, wheras the thief only has one channel, which you’d have to interrupt to get the leftover stability.

At least that seems like solid reasoning to me. Maybe they just forgot and I’m about to get yelled at for bringing it up, hehe.

Honestly I miss the GW1 skill point approach they added with the EOTN consumables. We use our skill points for skills obviously (my alts spend way less time unlocking skills now, which is awesome) but also for a limited selection of crafting.

In GW1 skillpoints had a lot more utility mostly because the skill system was different, and you could be learning skills on a single character from various classes for years. So it was this nice bit of horizontal progression. Here we use them in a vertical or comsetic sense of progression too, which is great, but there’s not a whole lot of stuff to spend them on which is, I think, the OP’s problem.

What I miss is the ability to take your “levels” via skillpoints and use them to craft buffs. Doesn’t have to be anything major, just an extra sink, maybe something like a stackable extra MF buff, waypoint discount, catalyze them along with something else in to other currency types… heck IDK, I do feel like something that you’re earning no matter what it is you do every time you play should have a bit more difficult decisions in how its spent.

I vote new consumable recipies for all crafting types, but make ’em soulbound. Basically, this is your XP, for your character, so why not be able to use it to “customize” your stuff a bit for yourself, maybe by reinforcing equipment so it has one more level of durability, mark a frequently used waypoint so you could return once for free, extend the duration of a potion, establish a “stash” at a world location that you can use as bank access.

Assign “camraderie” ranks to other players that would make your combos with frequent friends more effective, give you enhanced MF when in a party with them, or some other beneficial mechanic that creates individuality for your character’s interactions with others?

What about a favored enemy system where you could do the opposite for enemy types or even specific bosses, allowing you to gain the equivalent of a mob type damage potion because you decided to spend the character’s experiences studying specific foes?

I think there are a lot of ways skill points could be leveraged to create meaningful, horizontal, and individualized effects for characters, similar to the way characters can individualize themselves in WvW with the WxP ranking system. Then all those scrolls would be a lot more thematic as “written experience” for your alts, and would have a lot more utility for your main too.

liefbread.9513:

JudgeD.5673:

My big complaint with engineer is not stealth but stability. Eng has a certain skill chain to give a good bit of stealth, but for stability, only using 6 Lyssa runes + elite or 50% with elixir X (also elite) are our only options.
This change to Elixir B will benefit me greatly as I tend to be a heavy elixir user. I support the change to Throw Elixir S as well since that can now be stacked with the previous mentioned stealth skill chain.

the thief sits with his hand on his chin please, tell me more about your dire need for stability you poor baby.

Indeed.

Thieves have a single source of stability ever, which is a channelled 90 second cooldown elite. If you cancel the channel, you are literally getting 9 ish seconds of stability for our elite slot.

So It’s funny when people talk about stability like it’s a thing… because it’s easy to forget that it exists when you main a thief.

HOWEVER.

I agree that stability is a little more of an issue for engineers (I also have an engi I play from time to time) than it is for thieves. Mostly because as a thief I have a lot more gap opening, evasion, or stealth utility (Well, we used to have lots of stealth to either avoid to otherwise mitigate the CC actively. Thieves are well built as a class to have tools avaliable to GTFO., wheras engis aren’t.

This isn’t a BAD thing really. One of the Thief’s design goals is that we’re supposed to be top notch in terms of our ability to dictate the terms on an engagement. The Engi isn’t built that way. Engis are built to have superior reactive abilities due to a diverse and unpredictable toolset that makes them difficult to counter. The problem with Engi stability is that they’re a sort of odd-duck mid-range class that is designed to be precariously positioned in the no-mans-land between melee and ranged fighting. For Engis (in my experience) being out of position is far more devastating to their skillset than most other classes. Non-engi ranged templates generally have great tools to stay ranged, often out of range of many CCs melee templates generally have lots of great tools to stay in melee, and commonly come with enhanced resistance to CC, or increased tanking abiliuty when CC’d.

The problem is that while Engis have some theoretically good tools to remain at their optimal range, it puts them in the optimal range for almost everyone else’s hard CCs, and they’re not quite as durable or resistant and their melee brethren. Heck, as a class that thrives on being in position I’d argue Engis should probably have some of the best stability uptime in the game.

I distinctly remember a long time ago an interview about the main theme for Guild Wars, when the original game was still in production (GW1)

A lot of versions were done, and they felt that it was important to put together something that wasn’t just recognizable, but didn’t get really irritating the five millionth time you heard it. Went on to say that this was very important in all of the music compositions, that the BGM should be stage setting, but also relatively low key as it’s background music.

I’ll have to see if I can find that interview. Also, I’m not entirely sure how involve Soule is with the ongoing development, as in, is he responsible for the newer tracks and themes we’ve been hearing come with the LS updates, or is someone else at the helm?

Redname answer on this one?

Conncept.7638:

Requires a group

• Group Events
• Nearly every event in Orr (‘group’ or otherwise)
• The newly added invasions
• All Meta Events
• Nearly all champions
• All dungeons
• SPvP
• WvW

Does not require a group

• Heart tasks (available once per heart)
• Non-group events (well… most of them)
• Personal Story

You’re a bit off on this list.

Very few champions require a group, Champion Karka and Risen Nobles and a select few others come to mind. Aside from those examples the vast majority of champs in the game are not only soloable, but EASILY so by a wide variety of builds, though every class/build will have a different list of “untouchable” champions, that list is a lot smaller than the list of champions you can successfully solo pretty easily.

For that matter very few group events actually require a group. I don’t know what you’re on about with Orr. Everything but the big meta bosses out there is pretty easily soloable.

I’d say that the things that require a group are generally the things one would expect to require a group, group instances, “boss” level world events/ metas and both forms of PvP.

Though, to be fair, WvW and the sPvP solo que are perfectly soloable without a formal “group” if you just want to drop in and contribute without any formal setup.

You’re kidding right?

This franchise, thanks to the input of Jeremy Soule, has some of the best music of the MMO crop.

The problem is that you’ve heard it all before, as no boss has unique music.

Furthermore, the music you’ve listed is decent, but still nothing special in that it sounds like formulaic JRPG battle music.

I loves those games too, but you’re having a nostalgia attack. You want to FEEL like you did when you heard this music, which is why the music is meaningful to you, not because it’s great music.

I LOL’d

Good screencap of Traherne with that creepy smile.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Killface.1896:

There will be lot lot lot of adds,and with no dps meter no1 will care about your dps anyway.

I think the 15 minute fail timer would disagree with you…

80 people, all amazing DPS, all at the dragon is a less successful fight than condi users keeping max stacks and throwing epidemics, wells, caltrops, fire traps, and whatever other field effects at everything that so much as glances at those turrets.

DPS alone simply can not win this fight, and condi builds simply posess better sustained uniform DPS and control versus waves of trash due to control effects sharing the condition duration stat with damaging conditions.

It’s kind of obvious where condition and control builds fit in to this fight, and why they’re essential to the win.

Personally, I plan on defending the turrets and focusing adds.

While it would be nice if some of the stacking issues in large scale fights were addressed in terms of damage, they’ve already been addressed in terms of loot tagging and event credit problems. You have to do something very wrong to use a condi build and actually not do enough to get credit.

As for whether or not you’re helping the team, that all depends on what you DO with your condi build. You want to be up in a boss’s face, but you have a condi build. You obviously know the mechanics and know that your efforts are better used elsewhere. It’s like wielding a longbow and demanding you be made more viable at melee range.

Condi builds (especially in teams) are extremely efficient at burning down trash while remaining vertical, as it takes a lesser stat investment to get quality condition damage. Condition builds are designed to be slow damage survivable builds on purpose.

Now, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like to see condition caps raised or altered in some way to allow people to be just as ineffective at burst damage in all situations. I am, however, saying that part of the logic behind redesigning boss mechanics like the new Teq fight is creating roles that don’t just boil down to hitting 1 with zerker gear on.

Any raid or mass player content that is winnable by having a giant zerg all bashing on one entity is boring, simple, and poorly thought out. The old teq mechanics were just that: Everyone hit a foot for about ten minutes, you have enough passive buffs in the zerg to survive, and you always win.

Thus, the loot sucks… because it has to.

Now you’ve got a chance to be GOOD at something in this fight. You’ve got a chance to actually be USEFUL and CONTRIBUTE. It’s not giving you your own private stack limit on the boss, but its definitely a step in the right direction.

Why people think doing jobs that don’t involve directly smashing the boss in the face is some kind of penalty or inferior play experience is beyond me. Reward for the event is based on how dead Teq gets, and teq won’t get very dead at all with nobody taking care of those turrets and using them with skill. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to be in the place that’s responsible for winning.

I love these forums. Seriously though, lets get with the school uniforms. I’d like a cap and some nice shorts.

Honestly they should ABSOLUTELY all inherit their damage from equipped weapons.

Otherwise those damage sources get free top tier damage without gearing for it, which is sort of kitten ing on every ability that derives damage from the weapon.

Craig.2403:

The problem with d/d deathblossom is that db has a 3/4s cast time and 1/2s evade frame. Aka, you are vulnerable for 1/4s without any way to dodge the incoming attack. While this is ok vs the average player, against a high level player you can’t do a thing to them, and they can hit you without you being able to do anything.

This is about as untrue a statement as I have heard. It’s like saying hammer warriors are gimpy because you can be poked during the aftercast/precast of the stuns and thus they’re useless builds.

A solid DB thief doesn’t play offensive. It’s not a burst build and it can’t play burst. If you see someone chaining DB on an aware opponent with a cooldown advantage you’re watching a poor DB thief. Lots of these are left over from when the skill was full-evade and you COULD just hit 3 until your init was out.

A decent DB thief uses autos to keep poison up, and plays extremely defensively, using DB and dodgetrops to punish enemy action and control the fight.

You don’t see it in high level play because the build used to have 2 cover conditions on upkeep (poison and weakness) and since the lotus poison nerf it only has one (poison) and because tournament teams are often much more support oriented. The thief has little passive support to offer his team, and is often passed over in favor of someone who can hand out boons without working extra to do so. Additionally, it’s an extremely high skillcap build to play efficiently, requiring extreme amounts of situational awareness and reflexive timing to utilize properly. People don’t like to play hard builds in PvP for the most part because they simply experience lower win rates on average compared to something that takes less effort.

I think it’s a better stat combo for mixed gear, and looking over all of the MF replacements that seems to be what anet is targeting. They’re giving more varied stat spreads which, in turn, allow for more fine tuning of gear based stats. As a suit it’s not a great idea, but when you look at all these new combos and but them in the context of more balanced builds you can start to see how combinations can start to look viable. An Assassin’s/zerker/cleric combo for instance might be a good way to get a very specific set of numbers that you might be after, while the easy options still exist in full sets of more “balanced” stat spread gear.

Shortbow feels like the weapon that was handed to us so that we wouldn’t be left out of the ranged AoE club. Kinda like longbow for warriors.

While you could theoretically build around it, it’s sole selling point is that it’s a ranged AoE weapon, and other than that one thing it isn’t particularly better than other options you already have. Warrior longbow has a similar design. It’s ranged AoE for a class that otherwise doesn’t have any, and it makes a nice combo field you can exploit with your swap for cool effects. This doesn’t make it broken or useless, but it does make it a much better swap than a main weapon, and for thieves weapon swapping is more of an occasional thing than a regular part of a rotation due to our initiative mechanics, which is why there’s less direct action and more “stuff that works well with another weapon” than what you see in the warrior longbow design.

They adressed this question already. The thief’s no-offhand skills only exist so that theives aren’t stuck with less skills than the other classes during the tutorial. They were never intended for long term use, as dual skills are a class-defining thief mechanic and thieves are all intended to dual wield (unless you’re holding a shortbow, which you probably won’t get before you pick up an offhand)